God
A God, Deity, or Divinity is a class of supernatural being of powers far beyond mortal capability. Depending on their class, they may or may not have the ability to freely control reality and perform miracles. The gods in fact, are of the highest rungs of existence, most of which are untouchable by mortal standard. Even amongst the gods, however, there are three different types, and in one of them, several ranks. Types Natural God Also known as 'Independent Gods', 'True Gods', etc they are naturally extant deities who exist independently of the religions and faiths that worship them, and independently of the portfolios they allegedly represent. Instead, they are infinite sources or conduits of power, which exist whether or not the universe ‘needs’ them. By this nature, they are infinitely more powerful than the Dependent Gods, who base their strength on worshippers, who always be finite in number. Another basis is that Natural Gods, due to their independent existence from mortals, are of a transcendent nature. A Natural God's true form is such that to witness it is enough to drive a mortal mad, if not outright kill them from the very sight of its transcendence. As most Natural Gods ignore the presence of mortals, only those select few concerned with mortal interaction take care to assume more sanity-friendly appearances. With very few exceptions, Natural Gods are, due to their detached nature, only very rarely witnessed by mortals. Only an infinitesimal minority of religions and faiths in the universe are centred around Natural Gods. In that respect, Paraiso is a very exceptional case, in that it has more than one Natural God as the centrepieces of various religions. Imitator Main Article: Servus A class of pseudo-deity, Imitators were originally Servitors, who were either disposed of by their creators, intentionally ran away from them, or were simply forgotten of and somehow loosed into the worlds. These Servitors are servant beings created by the natural gods for the purpose of performing menial tasks or to function as pets. As creations of natural gods, they are also capable of producing Grain and thus performing miracles, if not to the extent of their creators, due to their comparably lower Exousia. They eventually wind up worshipped as gods, usually by small, isolated towns. Due to their nature, they are in the same way more powerful than Dependent Gods. In terms of numbers, it is possible that the Imitators outnumber the Natural Gods, and, due to their active migration into the mortal realm, far more likely to be discovered and/or worshipped. Known Imitators Include: *B'smalik-thus Dependent God Created by the invalidated faith of a large enough group of sentients, collectivized will that moulds the normally inert Chaff that permeates the environment into something that validates their baseless belief. This class of divinity is of the lowest form, feeding off only on the faith of their people and relying on enlarging that collective will in order to divert more Chaff into them. The larger their number of worshippers, the greater their power grows. Nevertheless, it is impossible for Dependents to equal even the least of the natural gods and imitators in power. Being constructs, they are a result of mortal influence, not divine. Assumedly, once nobody believes in them any more, it is safe to say that Dependent Gods will simply vanish. Due to this, they tend to be aggressive in expanding their religions, depending on their personalities, whether by conquest, proselytism, "miracle" working, or others, while natural divinities tend to be more varied in their approach to mortals and can be anywhere from aggressive to completely unconcerned with their affairs. After all, their existences don’t depend on mortal faith. Indeed, most Natural Gods are detached from mortal affairs, concerning themselves more with personal interests. As Dependent Gods are basically figments of the imagination realized by faith, a class of existence connected to mortals, they do not produce Grain, emanate Chaff, nor hold Exousia. This is opposed to true divinities, in this case beings who were created by Maros-Brhan using Dexos-Brhan’s power, and thus feed off of the infinite energies of the Dreaming God, existing independently of the wishes of mortals. Depending on their attitude, Natural Gods may view them as either heathen false gods that must be eradicated, or just another phenomenon that naturally occurs in the universe in relation to mortal life. In particular, the High Dragon Goddess Agnes Tyamàt is too busy managing the Natural Gods to concern herself with such "insignificant" entities. Dependent Gods are worshipped in an asymptotic majority of all religions in the universe. Known Dependent Gods include: *Phlogos *Possibly Mah-lu, though thanks to the nature of the Feld, this is debatable *Edan Natural God Ranks These are the ranks of the Natural Gods, in descending order. Overdeity Also known as the "Offspring", Overdeities are beings of omnipotence beyond ‘mere’ gods. These entities are of a power that allows them to create entire space-time continua, multiverses, realities, pantheons of smaller gods, etc, sometimes without even thinking about it. Overdeities tend to be loners, aimlessly wandering the non-conceptuality of the Heart of Darkness, and perhaps settling down at one point or another to start a reality or two. Some, however, like Dexos-Brhan and Maros-Brhan, are two ‘brothers’. Overdeities are eternal by mortal standards, having no concept of time constraints, instead subject to a higher meta-temporal plane. Being above the concept of normal time, a moment and an entire universe’s lifetime have no meaningful difference to them. This also confers onto them a level of invincibility, as it is easily possible to pre-emptively wipe a hostile creature from existence. This however, only applies to beings below the class of Overdeity. Overdeities tend to be non-confrontational, as their equally distributed Exousia means that they have no power over each other. There does, however, exist an agreement of sorts between them, that is, to never tamper with one another’s realities. The number of Overdeities is unknown, and indeed best not discussed. Timeless legend exists among them that they ultimately derive from a mysterious Metaomnipotent entity known as the Triune, who created Overdeities in Their own image and tasked them with creating realities. Tradition holds that Grain is a reflection of the Triune's power gifted to the Overdeities, and that the Triune is the source of all Exousia, distributed evenly amongst them. While a vast majority of Overdeities are now sceptical of Their existence, the Triune is still considered by some to be the best explanation for their origin. Overdeities may be compared to an author who writes multiple series of books set in different Verses. Known Overdeities include: *Dexos-Brhan *Maros-Brhan *In Real Life, Authors High God The closest thing to the traditional perception of a supreme deity. In a ‘lesser’ class of ‘infinite’ than Overdeities, High Gods are at least capable of creating universes within a multiverse. It might be possible for them to create multiverses as well, but these multiverses are limited within a certain multiversal tree. That is to say, rather than creating an entirely different multiverse, their multiverses are merely subsets of a multiversal tree. May also create pantheons to run universes they make. High Gods are created by Overdeities to oversee particular multiversal trees. One can view this relationship in a way similar to that of the owner of a business, who is always busy playing golf, and the Chief Operating Officer, who is always in the office managing the business for the owner. As such, High Gods tend to be more tied to the tree they run, rather than Overdeities who eventually move on to work on other ‘projects’. Depending on the design of the multiverse in question, a High God may or may not be the only deity existing in that multiverse. Their nature as infinite beings created specifically manage a multiverse means that they have no need for any form of assistance. Known High Gods include: *Agnes Tyamát *In real life literature, Azathoth of Lovecraftian fame, although Azathoth itself does no supervision. Greater God The greater pantheon, these gods represent the highest level of the division of labour for the supervision of a multiverse. Fundamental concepts such as fundamental forces, universal gravitational constants, entropy, matter, energy, space, time, and in some rare cases, life and death, fall under their jurisdictions. Such deities have general enough roles that mortals tend to notice their portfolios early on and create Dependent Gods for said portfolios, resulting in various complications. Taking Death as an example, the Greater God of Death must rightfully take every soul that is reaped by the Dependent reapers and death gods conjured up by every single culture that has such a concept. Though expressed as great powers on the scale of the multiverse, Greater Gods are nevertheless somewhat limited in scope to their particular portfolios if said portfolio happens to be something given to them by a higher power, such as whatever High Gods they report to. That is not to say that a Greater God is not impressive by itself, nor is it to say that they are actually bound to their given functions. The power of a Greater God is such that they are easily capable of shaping their multiverses according to their whims, unhindered by such limits as a portfolio or godly domain. A Greater God of Fire might oversee fire, yes, but this makes Him no less capable of manipulating space or time or any other cosmic concept. He is the Greater God of Fire only because of His choice to focus on fire, or because the task to do so was assigned to Him by a High God. Known Greater Gods include: *Eden *Thanas *Cecil Jormungand *The three younger Dragon Goddess Sisters *Niorne *In real life literature, the Outer Gods of HP Lovecraft. Lesser God The classical pantheon. “Local” gods, who are bound to a certain planet. They can be viewed as low level managers in charge of various things native to that planet. Frequently conglomerating into groups, they actually spend more time politicking amongst themselves than doing anything particularly useful. A Lesser God is called such in a fitting way. Though they are as infinite as any other Natural God, they are nevertheless quite reduced in scope compared to the Greater Gods. This is shown by the fact that they are indeed bound to the planetary scale. Lesser Gods are easily capable of wiping planets clean of life and reshaping them according to their whims. However, to go beyond that planet's influence reduces their power. Alternatively, their power only extends to the scale of a planet, and they are incapable of manipulating areas of space on the scale of a star system. In the case of Dexos-Brhan's universe, Lesser Gods are only capable of influencing the planet that has been alotted to them by Agnes Tyamát, and are restricted from large-scale alterations on other worlds. This is due to the fact that every planet is populated by a pantheon of Lesser Gods, and thus each has their own jurisdiction. As such, the restriction was imposed by the High Dragon Goddess Herself. In the rare cases when Lesser Gods are revealed to mortals, they are revealed as a group, thus earning worship as pantheons. In all, Lesser Gods are a very ambiguous group to define, particularly because their limitations, or indeed their existence, varies between Overdeities. Known Lesser Gods include: *Gaurdew *In real life myth, The Greek and Roman pantheons. *Independent Lesser Gods who don't form pantheons can be likened to Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. Nameless God No-name gods without any designation. A great majority of natural gods are the Nameless Gods, who have no given orders outside of confining their "games and roughhousing" to planets. Accordingly, their jurisdictions are greatly limited, restricted only to a given space in their immediate surroundings. A Nameless God can hide in the space of a tiny closet, or within the confines of a village, town, city, or even a province or nation. Such domains on that level, however, are quite rare. By standard, Nameless Gods only prefer tiny domains and to play around without a care, like they did in the ages before the planets were born, rather than take any responsibility over creation. Hiding within a space as tiny as a closet, for example, is a very easy task. Due to their godhood, Nameless Gods can easily create microcosms within that space. Stories of bizarre, alien worlds hidden in caves, or inside rabbit holes are likely to be the result of a mortal stumbling into a Nameless God's realm. By the time others investigate it, however, that realm would be no more. Thanks to the reclusive nature of natural gods, it is likely that the owner of the space has either moved on to somewhere else, or completely separated his domain from mortal perception. Allein Tyamat, despite being in the highest rung of a family possible, has no responsibility, and would rather enjoy doing things on her own terms. As such, she fits into this category. Known Nameless Gods include: *Allein Tyamát *Kiresh-Sohtih *The Philosopher Worship vs. Favour While it is common in all religions to worship the gods that they patronise, the actual reactions to, and relevance of, worship to them varies between classes. Natural Gods are beings that exist regardless of worship. Depending on their attitude, they may, or may not care about the fact that mortals are glorifying them. For the most part, however, natural gods are not swayed by any form of worship and view it as meaningless flattery, a pitiful attempt to curry favour with them. They believe that religious rituals are not necessary to express their gratefulness, and that actions in day to day life are more important than how many times a person prays per day. Natural Gods prefer to instead choose mortals according to their own standards. Suffice to say, their standards are so high that nobody ever qualifies. As such, it is common practise for one to simply choose a mortal to favour through their own discretion. Eden, however, gives her offer of blessing and favour to mortals openly, on the condition of following through with a contract. It should be noted, however, that this is the case for natural gods who actually pay attention to mortals. The greater majority of them do not. Imitators, in the same way, react differently to worship, depending on their levels of intelligence. Some oppressive pets might lord it over their worshippers for sacrifice, while other guardians do it for reward. Still, some serving Imitators are modest and insist that they are but servants, and others will be grateful for the appreciation they receive for their work. The more ambitious ones seek worship as a means to bolster their ego, and a way to keep control over their worshippers. Dependent Gods always favour worship, as they need it to survive. In this way, they are the most active with regards to actuating signs and wonders to gain a religious following, which in turn will further strengthen their powers. How they approach this, however, varies greatly between their personalities, as Dependent Gods will run the gamut between benevolent and oppressive, depending on what the people believe of them. See also List of deities Category:Gods Category:Metaphysics